City of Joburg pushes ahead with integration plans in order to improve service delivery in the metro

The reintegration of City of Johannesburg’s 13 entities has been intensified in order to improve service delivery in the metro.

This was revealed by the economic hub’s City Manager Ndivhoniswani Lukhwareni on Friday at the Hyatt Hotel‚ Rosebank‚ where he was delivering his strategic overview of Johannesburg to investors on its 2015/16 performance.

These entities include Pikitup‚ City Power as well as Joburg Water. The city has 13 entities altogether.

A task team was established to look at the feasibility of the reintegration and a decision was taken by the Johannesburg city council earlier this year.

“We have opted to absorb them so that services will now be run by departments. The assurance that we have is that‚ except for the board members‚ there will be not much change in positions‚” said Lukhwareni.

“The technical work still remains and the people doing that work will still [retain] their jobs‚” added the city manager.

Earlier this year‚ Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba said he was moving to bring the city’s agencies under the metro’s authority‚ in an apparent about-turn from a promise in the run-up to the 2016 local government elections.

He took aim at the boards of entities belonging to the city‚ pledging to make savings of at least R18 million from the salaries of non-executive board members alone. However‚ the proposed changes were aimed at fostering accountability.

Mashaba also assured that no jobs would be lost in the proposed restructuring‚ stating that the city will be “extremely sensitive to the issue of employment.”